Financial uncertainty emphasizes the need for a personalized, omni-channel customer experience.
The banking industry outran many others in the race to move the customer experience online. To stay competitive, financial institutions have offered online banking for years – pay bills, transfer funds, deposit a check (remember checks?), and more without paper, stamps or standing in a never ending line at the local branch. Many institutions have foregone the idea of physical branches altogether, instead existing solely where their customers spend most of their time – online.
However, no matter how innovative your website or chatbot is, a true omni-channel experience is necessary to increase customer satisfaction and loyalty. That means you’d be remiss to forget about the person behind the screen and their need for a more personalized, human experience. Below are three ways to include the critical human side of the equation.
Anticipate their needs
It’s been a wild year, and it’s tempting to take a reactionary approach to your marketing. But if you get proactive and pay attention, your customers are telling you what they want. Use the data you already collect to send personalized messaging to customers right when they need it.
For example, if geolocation technology tells you your customer recently visited a car dealership, you can follow up with a mobile notification or email about a car financing offer. This type of automated marketing can be built and deployed with a tool like Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC), ensuring you never miss an opportunity to make relevant and timely connections with your customers.
Give them control
I get it, you get it...these are uncertain times. So while your customers are potentially experiencing little or no control over their employment, health, and childcare, it’s more important than ever that they retain it over their finances. Illustrating this point is the fact that your customers have a heightened awareness of their financial situation, with many delaying large purchases, others investing in WFH-inspired home renovations, and both these groups seeking out financial advice.
Your organization must identify ways to put your customers in the driver’s seat, whether it’s a campaign offering financial advice, lowering or deferring the minimum monthly payment on credit cards, or simply letting them customize their online experience to suit their needs.
Empathize and Adapt
Many of your customers are experiencing cognitive overload, with stressors from all corners of their lives impacting their thoughts and behaviors. As a result, effective long-term decision making has been hindered and reactions to negative events are more extreme.
This increased desire for stability and convenience (and, of course, safety) has forced more transactions to go online in 2020. Implementing a frictionless, valuable omni-channel experience goes further than ever due to the fear and uncertainty surrounding your customers’ finances.
It’s logical to assume online interactions will continue to grow post-pandemic, and tools like SFMC offer the predictive analytics to back it up. Go beyond simple email campaigns and develop a people-first, omni-channel content strategy involving in-app notifications, SMS, and blog posts that meet your customers where they are and alleviate some of their stressors.
In an age when customer experience is set to overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator, your business can’t afford to be one-dimensional.
Share this Blog with colleagues
